Software Engineering Services for the AI Center Groups

The Software Engineering team applies software engineering expertise and an understanding of scientific processes to deliver high-quality software that advances cutting-edge research in close collaboration with researchers, research groups within the AI Center. 

The Software Engineering group is part of the AI Center with the mission is to help researchers create the most efficient, scalable, and sustainable research codes possible in order to enable new scientific advances.

The Team works as an integral part of traditional academic research groups, providing leadership in the design and construction of complex and highly customized software systems. 

Member of the SE team are expected to work on the research software projects with an effort of roughly 50-70% of their time. The remaining 30-50% are dedicated to SE team activities and professional development.

Services offered include:

SE Project Intake, Assignment & Management

Allocating individual SE time to specific projects can be managed in a manner best suited for all parties involved. Requirements tend to be unique and therefore the structure of project intake and assignment should be organized in a way that addresses the needs of a researcher or group while maximizing the ability of an individual SE to make a meaningful impact.

Project Proposals are submitted through the ML Cloud user management system (SE Team). Only PIs and Group Managers can view the submission (which is located above notifications:

To submit a project - click on “New SE Team Project” form. Once submitted, the submitted project will show up as submitted. When we evaluate the current team capacity and requirements for the project, you will see status updates, as communication with the SE Team progresses.

Publications & Authorship

SEs sit at the intersection of scholarly research and software development. A common and extremely important output of scholarly research is the journal/conference publication. We encourage SEs, PIs, and/or researchers to discuss authorship as soon as possible. It is typically recommended that if a publication would not have been possible without the SE, then the SE member should be included as a co-author.

Group Lead

Kristina Kapanova

Research Staff

Jan Loderhose: Research Software Engineer
About Jan: Experience in creating websites with TYPO3 CMS with a focus on performance, usability, on page SEO and responsiveness. Frontend development with modern HTML, CSS and JS (vanilla). Extension development for TYPO3 CMS with PHP. Consulting during the planing phase for new online projects. Experience in planing and building reliable email eco systems and optimizing deliverability. Experience in analyzing online projects for GDPR compliance to find key issues for optimization or to obtain legal advice.

Mamen Thomas Chembakasseril: Research Software Engineer
About Mamen: Experience working with a variety of programming languages, including Python, Javascsript, SQL. For backend, Flask experience and for frontend React or Javascript. For research in the area of ML, experience includes in AI & computer vision - Tensorflow, OpenCV, pytorch, scipy, numpy, and sklearn within containerized environment. From the hardware side, experience in robotics with ROS 1/2, as well programming and working with variety of edge devices such as Raspberry Pi and Nvidia Jetson.

Robin Ruff: Research Software Engineer
About Robin: experience in working with variety of programming languages, including Python, Java, JavaScript, SQL, C/C++, Haskell, and Go. Primary focus has been on Python, particularly in the realm of machine learning, where I have utilized libraries such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, JAX, scipy, numpy, and sklearn. For web project, experience includes Python with Flask on the backend and either plain HTML and JavaScript or frameworks like Svelte or React on the frontend. Main research interests lie in Graph Neural Networks & Geometric Deep Learning & ML for Science, Formal Methods, Explainable ML.